The News Line: EditorialTuesday, 22 January 2013Imperialism opens gates of hell in North AfricaTORY prime minister David Cameron has promised that British imperialism is prepared to wage a war lasting decades throughout Africa and the Middle East – regardless of the cost in money or human life.

Speaking on Sunday about the seizure of the Algerian gas plant by Islamist militants connected to al-Qaeda, Cameron stated: ‘This is a global threat and it will require a global response. It will require a response that is about years, even decades, rather than months.’

His promise of decades of war and misery for the people of the world was echoed by his Foreign Secretary William Hague, who pledged British troops would be sent into Mali as part of an ‘EU training mission’ in support of French imperialism’s military adventure.

Hague also made the admission that the destruction being wrought in the region is a ‘spin-off’ from the war conducted by the British and French, along with their Gulf feudalist and jihadist allies, to overthrow the government of Libya and murder its leader Colonel Gadaffi.

This is no ‘spin-off’, it is a direct result of the war that he and Cameron were responsible for launching.

Nor can they claim to have been ignorant of the consequences of their brutal campaign to oust the secular regime of Gadaffi. The Colonel himself warned the world directly of what would happen if imperialism was successful.

In an interview given in Tripoli just before his murder he correctly predicted that if his regime was overthrown then North Africa would erupt and the ‘gates of hell’ would be opened.

He said: ‘Bin Laden’s people would come to impose ransoms by land and sea. We will go back to the time of Redbeard, of pirates, of Ottomans imposing ransom.’

Gadaffi’s prediction has come true with a vengeance.

Imperialism, in its desperate lust to gain mastery over the oil and mineral wealth of the region, has unleashed hell on the population.

Those jihadist forces that were its allies in the war against Libya are now being proclaimed the enemy against whom decades of war must be fought.

While they are demonised as murderous animals in North Africa, these same jihadists are being armed and supported as loyal allies in the war to overthrow the secular regime of President Assad in Syria.

Should the imperialists succeed in their aim of seizing Syria as a prelude to invading Iran, then the whole of the Middle East and North Africa will not just be destabilized but will go up in flames – flames that will engulf entire continents and millions of people.

In its death agony imperialism is thrashing around the world in an orgy of destruction that has only one aim – to steal the resources of the world and hang the consequences even if this means decades of destruction.

At the same time as they are promising decades of war across the globe Cameron, Hague and the coalition government are promising an equally barbaric war against workers, youth and the middle class at home.

The violence visited upon the people of North Africa is being matched with the violence of smashing the welfare state and creating destitution, poverty and homelessness here in Britain.

The working class face the same enemy as the people of the world – British imperialism and its servants in the coalition government.

Cameron and Hague must be indicted as war criminals over Libya and as plain criminals for their attacks on workers at home.

The only way they can be brought to justice and prevented from repeating the crimes they have committed against the Libyan people, against the Syrians and at the same time stopped from heaping misery on workers at home, is to kick them out through a general strike and replace them with a workers government that will make them answer for their crimes.